Louise Nevelson

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Louise Nevelson
Night Sail
1985

Project Area: Bunker Hill
Project: Crocker Center
Project Location: Wells Fargo Center, 333 S. Grand Avenue
Project Type: Developer

Description:

"Night Sail" is an aluminum and steel collage of different elements that include nautical forms assembled on a common frame coated with enveloping black matte paint which Nevelson once described as an "aristocratic" color. According to Nevelson, the title alludes to the expansiveness of the sea that reminded her of the open vistas she saw during a visit to Bunker Hill. "Night Sail" is located in the plaza joining two office towers designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. 30'h x 20w' x 9'd and weighing 33 tons, "Night Sail" is the only major work of outdoor sculpture in Los Angeles by Louise Nevelson.

Artist Profile

Soon after her birth in Kiev, Russia, Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) and her family immigrated to the United States where they settled in Rockland, Maine. Married at a young age to Charles Nevelson, she and her husband moved to New York where she enrolled at the Art Students League and studied visual and performing arts. In the 1930s, Nevelson assisted Diego Rivera on a mural for the Rockefeller Center, a WPA Federal Art Project. Then, focusing her attention on sculpture, she began to exhibit in New York and joined the WPA as a teacher for the Educational Alliance School of Art. Nevelson is most recognized for her abstract expressionist “boxes” which are grouped together to form new creations. These artworks are composed of found objects and painted in monochromatic colors. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The Louise Nevelson Plaza, an outdoor garden of her wood and metal collages, was established in Lower Manhattan in 1979 to commemorate her work.